Sunday, September 28, 2014

The lightest rain falls.
The sky gray; the air whisps cool.
Fall greets us at last.

1 My dear aunt is in the hospital right now, very sick, an unfun business. She loves haikus. Many a Sunday lunch, we sat together, as she sipped her Beefeater martini on the rocks with olives, passing a sheet of paper around, upon which she demanded, then and there, that we compose haikus. We mostly indulged her. Good, bad, or indifferent, I dedicate these haikus to her.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

1 Though fitting the form (if you pronounce “dappling” with two syllables, “dap-ling,” instead of three, “dap-ul-ing”), I’m not sure this exactly follows the spirit of the haiku. But it is a sincere expression of the respect and affection I feel for my camouflage Snuggie, which I have donned this early morning for the first time since last winter. The current temperature is seventy degrees, which is almost the sixties, which by my standards, is cold. (Ah, and it is the autumn equinox. I suppose that is an appropriate time for the onset of Snuggie season.)

Friday, September 19, 2014

I’ve been having my fun for a while iDoodling on the iPad (and previously on the iPhone), but of late I’ve returned to pen and paper. Not a judgement on the merits of one or the other. Just a shifting whim, for whatever reason. And I’ve been carrying around a little sketchbook and pen in my back pocket, in which I doodle little pictures of folks I see (or make up). They’re nothing fancy, crude sketches, but it’s fun to do, makes one notice and think about people and their details and quirks. (And when you start really looking, people sure do have a whole lot of details and quirks.)1

1 Totally tangentially, I’m officially cold right now. It’s 5:20 in the morning, I’m sitting outside, and I’m cold. (I put on a sweater!) Admittedly, I’m the guy who’s always chilled, when everyone else is warm, but this is decidedly not New Orleans summer weather. (Whoah! I just looked at the date, and it’s already late September? I guess it’s about time for the seasons to start getting mixedy-uppedy again.)

Thursday, September 18, 2014

The reunion: I confess, some part of me dreaded it. Would we all look old and fat? Would it be socially awkward?1 But people looked great, better than ever. (College kids often make horrible aesthetic choices.) And it’s amazing how, with the people one knew well, it’s like no time passed at all. Conversation flows as easily as ever.2 Old friends. The old school. Truly gratifying.3 (It took me a couple of days to get around to posting because I returned absolutely exhausted — way too much fun crammed into way too little time.)

1 And I’m pathologically bad with faces and names, and I had an anticipatory fear that I would make some blunder and completely blank on someone who I was supposed to know well.a (I was at a distinct disadvantage because I’m not a regular Facebook user and haven’t been tracking these peoples lives for the past however-many years.) But all the faces and names gelled quickly, and there was nought to worry about. (There were only a couple of people who I had trouble placing, and in my defense, I only knew them tangentially, and they had gone through major stylistic overhauls, glamming up significantly since their college years.)

a I should mention that we went to St. John’s College, which is a teeny-tiny school, and everybody knew everybody.b

b I should also mention that St. John’s is where The Lady and I met.

2 Of course, there was a fair bit of drinking, which tends to speed along this re-bonding.

3 The girls came along. They acted like the whole thing was way too dorky and lame and adult-ish, but in truth, I think they were busily soaking it all in.

Friday, September 12, 2014

We're at out twenty-year. Lovely seeing the old school and old friends. But holy crikey! Two decades! How much time has passed. How different life is now. We were such babies then. Each era has/had its joys and challenges. But it's been a long road (and if we're lucky will be a much longer road; how 'bout that fiftieth reunion?). Holy crikey! Two decades!